“I’ll always protect you, sweetheart,” Dolly whispered into Lulu’s ear. “Nothing bad will ever happen to us—you know that, right?”
Lulu slept on.
The next day they piled into two black armored cars that resembled jeeps, only heavier. Arc and some soldiers went in the first car, Dolly and Lulu and Kitty in the second. Sitting in the backseat, Dolly thought she could feel the weight of the car shoving them into the earth. She was exhausted, full of dread.
Kitty had undergone a staggering metamorphosis. She’d washed her hair, applied makeup, and slipped into a sleeveless sage-colored dress made of crushed velvet. It brought out flecks of green in her blue eyes and made them look turquoise. Kitty’s shoulders were athletically golden, her lips pinkly glossed, her nose lightly freckled. The effect was beyond anything Dolly could have hoped for. She found Kitty almost painful to look at, and tried to avoid it.
They breezed through the checkpoints and soon were on the open road, circling the pale city from above. Dolly noticed vendors by the road. Often they were children, who held up handfuls of fruit or cardboard signs as the jeeps approached. When the vehicles flew past, the children fell back against the embankment, perhaps from the speed. Dolly let out a cry the first time she saw this and leaned forward, wanting to say something to the driver. But what exactly? She hesitated, then sat back and tried not to look at the windows. Lulu watched the children, her math book open in her lap.
It was a relief when they left the city behind and began driving through empty land that looked like desert, antelopes and cows nibbling the stingy plant life. Without asking permission, Kitty began to smoke, exhaling through a slice of open window. Dolly fought the impulse to scold her for affronting Lulu’s lungs with secondhand smoke.
“So,” Kitty said, turning to Lulu. “What big plans are you hatching?”
Lulu seemed to turn the question over. “You mean…for my life?”
“Why not.”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Lulu said, thoughtful. “I’m only nine.”
“Well, that’s sensible.”
“Lulu is very sensible,” Dolly said.
“I mean what do you imagine,” Kitty said. She was restless, fidgeting her dry, manicured fingers as if she wanted another cigarette but was making herself wait. “Or do kids not do that anymore.”
Lulu, in her wisdom, seemed to divine that what Kitty really wanted was to talk. “What did you imagine,” she asked, “when you were nine?”
Kitty considered this, then laughed and lit up. “I wanted to be a jockey,” she said. “Or a movie star.”
“You got one of your wishes.”
“I did,” Kitty said, closing her eyes as she exhaled smoke through the window. “I did get my wish.”
Lulu turned to her gravely. “Was it not as fun as you thought?”
Kitty opened her eyes. “The acting?” she said. “Oh, I loved that, I still do—I miss it. But the people were monsters.”
“What kind?”
“Liars,” Kitty said. “They seemed nice at first, but that was all an act. The outright horrible ones, the ones who basically wanted to kill you—at least they were being honest.”
Lulu nodded, as if this were a problem she’d dealt with herself. “Did you try lying too?”
“I did. I tried it a lot. But I couldn’t forget I was lying, and when I told the truth I got punished. It’s like finding out there’s no Santa Claus—you wish you could go back and believe in all that again, but it’s too late.”
She turned suddenly to Lulu, stricken. “I mean—I hope I—”
Lulu laughed. “I never believed in Santa Claus,” she said.
They drove and drove. Lulu did math. Then social studies. She wrote an essay on owls. After what felt like hundreds of miles of desert, punctuated by bathroom stops at outposts patrolled by soldiers, they tilted up into the hills. The foliage grew dense, filtering out the sunlight.
Without warning, the cars swung off the road and stopped. Dozens of soldiers in camouflage seemed to materialize from the trees. Dolly and Lulu and Kitty stepped out of the car into a jungle crazed with birdcalls.
Arc came over, stepping carefully in his fine leather shoes. “The general is waiting,” he said. “He is eager to greet you.”
Everyone moved as a group through the jungle. The earth under their feet was bright red and soft. Monkeys romped in the trees. Eventually they reached a set of crude concrete steps built into the side of a hill. More soldiers appeared, and there was a creak and grind of boots as all of them climbed. Dolly kept her hands on Lulu’s shoulders. She heard Kitty humming behind her: not a tune, just the same two notes, over and over.
The hidden camera was ready in Dolly’s purse. As they climbed the steps, she took out the activator and nestled it in her palm.
At the top of the stairs the jungle had been cleared away to accommodate a slab of concrete that might have been a landing pad. Sunlight pushed down through the humid jungle air, making wisps of steam at their feet. The general stood in the middle of the concrete, flanked by soldiers. He looked short, but that was always true of famous people. He wasn’t wearing the blue hat, or any hat, and his thick hair stood up oddly around his grim triangular face. He wore his usual military regalia, but something about it all seemed slightly askew, or in need of cleaning. The general looked tired—there were pouches under his eyes. He looked grumpy. He looked like someone had just hustled him out of bed and said, They’re here, and he’d had to be reminded of who the hell they were talking about.
There was a pause when no one seemed to know what to do.
Then Kitty reached the top of the stairs. Dolly heard the humming behind her, but she didn’t turn to look; instead, she watched the general recognize Kitty, watched the power of that recognition move across his face in a look of appetite and uncertainty. Kitty came toward him slowly—poured toward him, really, that was how smoothly she moved in her sage green dress, as if the jerking awkwardness of walking were something she’d never experienced. She poured toward the general and took his hand as if to shake it, smiling, circling him a little, seeming embarrassed to the point of laughter, like they knew each other too well to shake hands. Dolly was so taken by the strangeness of it all that at first she didn’t even think to shoot; she missed the handshake completely. It was only when Kitty pressed her narrow green body to the general’s uniformed chest and closed her eyes for a moment that Dolly came to—click—and the general seemed disconcerted, unsure what to do, patting Kitty’s back out of politeness—click—at which point Kitty took both his hands (heavy and warped, the hands of a bigger man) into her own slender hands and leaned back, smiling into his face—click—laughing a little, shyly, her head back like it was all so silly, so self-conscious-making for them both. And then the general smiled. It happened without warning: his lips pulled away to reveal two rows of small yellow teeth—click—that made him appear vulnerable, eager to please. Click, click, click—Dolly was shooting as fast as she could without moving her hand, because that smile was it, the thing no one had seen, the hidden human side of the general that would dumbfound the world.
All this happened in the span of a minute. Not a word had been spoken. Kitty and the general stood hand in hand, both a little flushed, and it was all Dolly could do not to scream, because they were done! She had what she needed, without a word having been said. She felt a mix of awe and love for Kitty—this miracle, this genius who had not merely posed with the general, but tamed him. That was how it felt to Dolly—like there was a one-way door between the general’s world and Kitty’s, and the actress had eased him across it without his even noticing. He couldn’t go back! And Dolly had made this happen—for the first time in her life, she had done a helpful thing. And Lulu had seen it.
Kitty’s face still held the winsome smile she’d been wearing for the general. Dolly watched the actress scan the crowd, taking in the dozens of soldiers with their automatic weapons, Arc and Lulu and Dolly with her ecstatic shini
ng face, her brimming eyes. And Kitty must have known then that she’d pulled it off, engineered her own salvation, clawed her way back from oblivion and cleared the way to resume the work she adored. All with a little help from the despot to her left.
“So,” Kitty said, “is this where you bury the bodies?”
The general glanced at her, not understanding. Arc stepped quickly forward, as did Dolly. Lulu came too.
“Do you bury them here, in pits,” Kitty asked the general in the most friendly, conversational voice, “or do you burn them first?”
“Miss Jackson,” Arc said, with a tense, meaningful look. “The general cannot understand you.”
The general wasn’t smiling anymore. He was a man who couldn’t abide not knowing what was going on. He’d let go of Kitty’s hand and was speaking sternly to Arc.
Lulu tugged Dolly’s hand. “Mom,” she hissed, “make her stop!”
Her daughter’s voice startled Dolly out of a momentary paralysis. “Knock it off, Kitty,” she said.
“Do you eat them?” Kitty asked the general. “Or do you leave them out so the vultures can do it?”
“Shut up, Kitty,” Dolly said, more loudly. “Stop playing games.”
The general spoke harshly to Arc, who turned to Dolly. His smooth forehead was visibly moist. “The general is becoming angry, Miss Peale,” he said. And there was the code; Dolly read it clearly. She went to Kitty and seized her tanned arm. She leaned close to Kitty’s face.
“If you keep this up,” Dolly said softly, “we will all die.”
But one glance into Kitty’s fervid, self-annihilating eyes told her it was hopeless; Kitty couldn’t stop. “Oops!” she said loudly, in mock surprise. “Was I not supposed to bring up the genocide?”
Here was a word the general knew. He flung himself away from Kitty as if she were on fire, commanding his solders in a strangled voice. They shoved Dolly away, knocking her to the ground. When she looked back at Kitty, the soldiers had contracted around her, and the actress was obscured from view.
Lulu was shouting, trying to drag Dolly onto her feet. “Mommy, do something, do something! Make them stop!”
“Arc,” Dolly called, but Arc was lost to her now. He’d taken his place beside the general, who was screaming with rage. The soldiers were carrying Kitty; Dolly had an impression of kicking from within their midst. She could still hear Kitty’s high, reaching voice:
“Do you drink their blood, or just use it to mop your floors?
“Do you wear their teeth on a string?”
There was the sound of a blow, then a scream. Dolly jumped to her feet. But Kitty was gone; the soldiers carried her inside a structure hidden in the trees beside the landing pad. The general and Arc followed them in and shut the door. The jungle was eerily silent: just parrot calls and Lulu’s sobs.
While the general raged, Arc had whispered orders to two soldiers, and as soon as the general was out of sight, they hustled Dolly and Lulu down the hill through the jungle and back to the cars. The drivers were waiting, smoking cigarettes. During the ride Lulu lay with her head in Dolly’s lap, crying as they sped back through the jungle and then the desert. Dolly rubbed her daughter’s soft hair, wondering numbly if they were being taken to prison. But eventually, as the sun leaked toward the horizon, they found themselves at the airport. The general’s plane was waiting. By then, Lulu had sat up and moved across the seat.
Lulu slept hard during the flight, clutching her Kate Spade bookbag. Dolly didn’t sleep. She stared straight ahead at Kitty’s empty seat.
In the dark of early morning, they took a taxi from Kennedy to Hell’s Kitchen. Neither of them spoke. Dolly was amazed to find their building intact, the apartment still at the top of the stairs, the keys in her purse.
Lulu went straight to her room and shut the door. Dolly sat in her office, addled from lack of sleep, and tried to organize her thoughts. Should she start with the embassy? Congress? How long would it take to get someone on the phone who could actually help her? And what exactly would she say?
Lulu emerged from her room in her school uniform, hair brushed. Dolly hadn’t even noticed it was light out. Lulu looked askance at her mother, still in yesterday’s clothes, and said, “It’s time to go.”
“You’re going to school?”
“Of course I’m going to school. What else would I do?”
They took the subway. The silence between them had become inviolable; Dolly feared it would never end. Watching Lulu’s wan, pinched face, she felt a cold wave of conviction: if Kitty Jackson died, her daughter would be lost to her.
At their corner, Lulu turned without saying good-bye.
Shopkeepers were lifting metal gates on Lexington Avenue. Dolly bought a cup of coffee and drank it. She wanted to be near Lulu. She decided to wait on that corner until her daughter’s school day had ended: five and a half more hours. Meanwhile, she would make calls on her cell phone. But Dolly was distracted by thoughts of Kitty in the green dress, oil burns winking on her arms, then her own obscene pride, thinking she’d tamed the general and made the world a better place.
The phone was idle in her hand. These were not the sorts of calls she knew how to make.
When the gate behind her shuddered up, Dolly saw that it was a photo print shop. The hidden camera was still inside her purse. It was something to do; she went in, handed it over, and asked for prints and a CD of everything they could download.
She was still standing outside the shop an hour later when the guy came out with her pictures. By then she’d made a few calls about Kitty, but no one seemed to take her seriously. Who could blame them? Dolly thought.
“These shots…did you use Photoshop, or what?” the guy asked. “They look, like, totally real.”
“They are real,” she said. “I took them myself.”
The guy laughed. “Come on,” he said, and Dolly felt a shudder deep in her brain. As Lulu had said this morning: What else would I do?
She rushed back home and called her old contacts at the Enquirer and the Star, a few of whom were still there. Let the news trickle up. This had worked for Dolly before.
Minutes later, she was e-mailing images. Within a couple of hours, pictures of General B. nuzzling Kitty Jackson were being posted and traded on the Web. By nightfall, reporters from the major papers around the world had started calling. They called the general, too, whose human relations captain emphatically denied the rumors.
That night, while Lulu did homework in her room, Dolly ate cold sesame noodles and set out to reach Arc. It took fourteen tries.
“We can no longer speak, Miss Peale,” he said.
“Arc.”
“We cannot speak. The general is angry.”
“Listen to me.”
“The general is angry, Miss Peale.”
“Is she alive, Arc? That’s all I need to know.”
“She is alive.”
“Thank you.” Tears filled Dolly’s eyes. “Is she—are they—treating her okay?”
“She is unharmed, Miss Peale,” Arc said. “We will not speak again.”
They were silent, listening to the hum of the overseas connection. “It is a pity,” Arc said, and hung up.
But Dolly and Arc did speak again. Months later—a year, almost—when the general came to New York to speak at the UN about his country’s transition to democracy. Dolly and Lulu had moved away from the city by then, but one evening they drove into Manhattan to meet Arc at a restaurant. He wore a black suit and a wine-colored tie that matched the excellent cabernet he poured for himself and Dolly. He seemed to savor telling the story, as if he’d memorized its details especially for her: how three or four days after she and Lulu had left the general’s redoubt, the photographers began showing up, first one or two whom the soldiers ferreted out of the jungle and imprisoned, then more, too many to capture or even count—they were superb hiders, crouching like monkeys in the trees, burying themselves in shallow pits, camouflaging inside bunches of leaves. Assassins h
ad never managed to locate the general with any precision, but the photographers made it look easy: scores of them surging across the borders without visas, curled in baskets and wine casks, rolled up in rugs, juddering over unpaved roads in the backs of trucks and eventually surrounding the general’s enclave, which he didn’t dare leave.
It took ten days to persuade the general he had no choice but to face his inquisitors. He donned his military coat with the medals and epaulets, pulled the blue hat over his head, took Kitty’s arm, and walked with her into the phalanx of cameras awaiting him. Dolly remembered how perplexed the general had looked in those pictures, newly born in his soft blue hat, unsure how to proceed. Beside him Kitty was smiling, wearing a black close-fitting dress that Arc must have gone to some trouble to procure, so apt was it: casual and intimate, plain yet revealing, the sort of dress a woman wears in private, with her lover. Her eyes were hard to read, but each time Dolly looked at them, rubbing her gaze obsessively over the newsprint, she’d heard Kitty’s laugh in her ears.
“Have you seen Miss Jackson’s new movie?” Arc asked. “I thought it was her finest yet.”
Dolly had seen it: a romantic comedy in which Kitty played a jockey, appearing effortless on horseback. Dolly had gone with Lulu at the local theater in the small upstate town where they’d moved shortly after the other generals began to call: first G., then A., then L. and P. and Y. Word had gotten out, and Dolly was deluged with offers of work from mass murderers hungry for a fresh start. “I’m out of the game,” she’d told them, and directed them to her former competitors.
Lulu had opposed the move at first, but Dolly was firm. And Lulu had settled in quickly at the local public school, where she took up soccer and found a new coterie of girls who seemed to follow her everywhere. No one in town had ever heard of La Doll, so Lulu had nothing to hide.
Dolly received a generous lump sum from the general shortly after his rendezvous with the photographers. “A gift to express our immense gratitude for your invaluable guidance, Miss Peale,” Arc had said over the telephone, but Dolly had heard his smile and understood: hush money. She used it to open a small gourmet shop on Main Street, where she sold fine produce and unusual cheeses, artfully displayed and lit by a system of small spotlights Dolly designed herself. “This feels like Paris” was a comment she often heard from New Yorkers who came on weekends to their country houses.